ANALYTICAL MODELS FOR ONE-DIMENSIONAL VIRUS TRANSPORT IN SATURATED POROUS-MEDIA

Analytical solutions to two mathematical models for virus transport in one-dimensional homogeneous, saturated porous media are presented, fo r constant flux as well as constant concentration boundary conditions, accounting for first-order inactivation of suspended and adsorbed (or filtered) viruses with different inactivation constants. Two. process es for virus attachment onto the solid matrix are considered. The firs t process is the nonequilibrium reversible adsorption, which is applic able to viruses behaving as solutes; whereas, the second is the filtra tion process, which is suitable for viruses behaving as colloids. Sinc e the governing transport equations corresponding to each physical pro cess have identical mathematical forms, only one generalized closed-fo rm analytical solution is developed by Laplace transform techniques. T he impact of the model parameters on virus transport is examined. An e mpirical relation between inactivation rate and subsurface temperature is employed to investigate the effect of temperature on virus transpo rt. It is shown that the differences between the two boundary conditio ns are minimized at advection-dominated transport conditions.